Modern mobile communication devices, such as cellular telephones media players with wireless connections, and other, have provided users with a robust line of applications and abilities. For example, virtually every cellular telephone now provides text messaging capabilities, internet connections, and virtual stores for downloading games and applications, just to name a few.
Utilization of virtually every feature on these devices requires significant time looking at the screen. It is undeniable that the use of these devices, while driving, is distracting to the driver and dangerous to both the driver and those around him or her. For this reason, many states have passed laws banning activities such as texting while driving. Although these laws are in place and most people know the dangerous, texting while driving, surfing the Internet, and other distracting activities are still engaged in by drivers on a regular basis.
One group that is notorious for being distracted while driving are teenagers. With the added component of the above-mentioned mobile devices, many parents are more fearful than ever of allowing their children to drive. One way to ensure children will not, for example, text and drive, is to require them to leave their cellular telephones at home. However, this puts the children in a dangerous situation of not having communicative capabilities. Although, in recent years, there was a time when most drivers did not have cellular telephone capability, they at least had the ability to pull over and utilize a pay telephone. Now, because cellular telephones have become so popular, pay phones have become virtually extinct. In addition, parents cannot prevent their children from using a passenger's mobile device while they drive.
One way to prevent communication, including text and voice, is through use of a wireless signal jammer. Generally, the objective of a wireless signal jammer is to interrupt the availability of the signal in the space of the receiver. They are devices that interfere with radio signals, i.e., any time-varying or spatial-varying quantity. As with other radio jamming, cell phone jammers block cell phone use by sending out radio waves along the same frequencies that cellular phones use. This causes enough interference with the communication between cell phones and towers to render the phones unusable. On most retail phones, the network would simply appear out of range. Most cell phones use different bands to send and receive communications from towers (called frequency division duplexing, FDD). Jammers can work by either disrupting phone-to-tower frequencies or tower-to-phone frequencies. Known handheld models block all bands from 800 MHz to 1900 MHz within about a 30-foot range (9 meters). The radius of cell phone jammers can range from a dozen feet for pocket models to kilometers for more dedicated units.
Currently-available jammers, such as the double and triple band jammers, can block all widely used systems (CDMA, iDEN, GSM, et al.) and are even very effective against newer phones which hop to different frequencies and systems when interfered with. As the dominant network technology and frequencies used for mobile phones vary worldwide, some work only in specific regions such as Europe or North America.
One possible way of preventing mobile communication while in a vehicle is to operate a mobile phone jammer within or on the vehicle, thereby blocking functionality of the driver's mobile device. However, if a jammer is merely placed inside the automobile, the driver could easily remove or disable the device. In addition, if the jammer is not powered by the vehicle, its operation will have to depend on batteries—a power supply that is not always dependable. Permanently installing the jammer, i.e., bolting and/or hardwiring it into the vehicle, requires tools and the aptitude to do so. With most newer automobiles, this would have to be performed by a professional, which is inconvenient and adds significant cost. Modification can also reduce the value of the vehicle.
Therefore, a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.